The average medical doctor graduates medical school with loans amounting to $205,674 for D.O. students, and $162,000 for M.D. students according to the AMA. Furthermore, the cost of tuition at medical schools across the nation has risen at roughly twice the rate of inflation, meaning that future doctors will only be saddled with more debt.
Because graduate students are no longer eligible to receive government-subsidized Stafford loans, today's future doctors have suddenly seen their interest rates double from 3.4% to 6.8%.
For many doctors, it is no longer cost-effective to enter the fields of family practice medicine or internal medicine. As residents, many doctors find they have little money left from each paycheck to pay for basic living expenses after making student loan payments.